1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a signal path configuration method and apparatus of a wireless device for avoiding radiation performance degradation caused by holding the wireless device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent wireless devices are designed with multiband functionality for supporting automatic roaming. Also, most of the recent wireless devices are equipped with internal antennas (so called, intenna) unlike the conventional wireless devices having external antennas.
As the wireless devices are becoming slim and compact in design, the available internal space for antenna installation is being limited. For this reason, an internal antenna of a conventional wireless device is installed around the location of a microphone (MIC) which occupies a relatively large space. This means that, since most of the metallic components that may degrade the antenna performance, such as a speaker and a camera, are arranged at the upper part of the wireless device, the antenna is arranged at lower part of the wireless device to avoid performance degradation and to secure enough installation space.
However, since the lower part of the wireless device is held by a user's hand during voice communication, the radiation characteristics of the antenna are likely to be degraded due to the presence of the user's hand. That is, since it is known that the presence of a hand over an antenna will cause a loss of radiation characteristics of over 6 dB, the presence of the user's hand must negatively influence the voice and data communication qualities of the wireless device.
Accordingly, it is a significant issue to secure the radiation performance of the wireless device in a limited physical structure. Since the communication service quality is one of the most important factors for determining the device performance, there has been much research conducted to improve communication service quality, and the antenna is one of the main issues related to the communication service quality enhancement.